Writer @IrishExaminer, author of Val's Kitchen, Bread on the Table and Irish Bread. Fermentation fanatic and teacher of fermenting and plant based cooking.

April 2017

April 27, 2017

I know that is this picture is a far cry from the food photos that I normally post, them being all green and laden with veg and all things fermenty.

This photo was circulated by Gary O'Hanlon, the jolly TV chef you will know from The Restaurant. It shows the food that was on offer at the launch of the new National Children's Hospital yesterday. Naturally Gazza was disgusted and as a PR exercise in encouraging goodwill and hope for our health care system, it was an epic fail, with bells on.

The "food" served is known as brown platters, something you might occasionally be happy to horse into on a Friday night evening with early pints, a carrot to keep you in the pub, without the carrot of course.

As a former photographer with the press, this fodder was commonplace for us snappers who were always starving and would wolf down any free food with no formal lunch breaks and as little free time to eat. My life at that time consisted of sausage rolls and brownies, two of my favourite things that had me swiftly developing the gut of a rural Irishman. I digress. The food in the photo was for the media and visitors to the launch, but we all know that food in our hospitals is dire and many people fear going into one of them for fear of having to ingest the goo, moreso than the fear of surgery itself.

I spent many nights with a then-young son who was sick in Tallaght children's hospital some years ago. I 'slept' in one of those criminally uncomfortable armchairs that look like they were made by the cast of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but without the entertainment of Jack Nicholson. The food, beans on toast, sausages, chips, it beggars belief. A breakfast of corn flakes and white toast, or, I think scrambled eggs which isn't too bad, dinner at about 11.30am and 'tea' which might be a bit of cold ham and coleslaw at 4pm and that's you done for the day. It's clear that the food administration is for the smooth running of the hospital and so the staff can all wrap up and go home and do it all again day after day. This isn't school dinners, Jamie style, this is food being served to sick people, some of them with chronic conditions that might have to spend months or longer in a HSE institution.

Given that we are talking about a children's hospital and a sick child will almost have a worn-out and distressed parent with them, running up a huge bill in the car park, taking time off work and being stressed out of their mind because their child is ill, what about the parents?

We know we need healthy, real food to maintain health and sitting in a chair for days or weeks with nothing to eat also adds to the stress of having to be a big support to your sick child.

Imagine if the parent could get a healthy meal in the canteen?

Imagine if your child could get a meal, full of fresh vegetables and good meat that was sustaining and aided rest and recovery?

Hasn't the penny dropped that food and health are linked???

Doctors receive something in the region of eight hours training in nutrition in all their years in medical school. When, as a parent, you mention diet to a doctor, consultant or anyone calling the shots for your health or that of your child's, they will throw your eyes up to heaven as if you are a mad-woman. Silly mothers, caring about their children. Next!

Hospitals employ dieticians, not nutritionists. Dieticians love to point out that they trained for four years minimum so that they can continue to recommend an outdated food pyramid that suggests we eat predominantly cereals, breads of any kind, pasta etc, with reduced fat intake and it's low fat all the way. Given that this way of eating has been debunked and is not healthy, it's also contradictory to the brown fried food on the plates above.

Germany is the world's leading producer of organic baby food, in the Bundesrepublik you can shop in fully organic supermarkets for almost everything, even tobacco. It's it in the constitution "Viel gemeuse, weinig fleish" lots of veg, little meat and a general belief that you should be outside as much as possible. Of course you will see German people giving their kids fizzy drinks too, but not as prolifically as here. They get it, invest in your health, you will enjoy better health. My kids were born in Germany and fresh fruit, salads and veggies were available at every corner shop. Snacking on berries and apples was normal and the whole country went mad at asparagus season and strawberry season. With vegetarianism being very normal in Germany cities, it's an easy country to eat well and eat lots of affordable organic food. When we relocated to Ireland their veg loving habits went out the window as they went to creche and I paid €280 a week for them to have chicken nuggets and chips.

Ireland's green and pleasant land is a perfect place to produce excellent food untreated by chemicals and pesticides, but organic producers are penalised with huge charges for their certification and face penalties if they don't have it. Shouldn't our government provide incentives and supports for anyone willing to put in the hard work of organic food production? Shouldn't the food we put into our bodies be our number one concern, above all else? With our lush land, organic conversion should be the key words on everyones lips. Look at the rise in bizzare auto-immune conditions, coinciding with the over-consumption of processed foods....

As a bearded hippy prophet once said "Let he who is without processed food, cast the first stone", but as long as the HSE purport that eating processed food does you no harm, how can we make educated decisions?

April 14, 2017

Getting out for a long walk in the woods last Sunday was a real treat. I called various pals who were mostly busy cleaning or sleeping off late nights but I did find one who’s always up for a bit of a countryside ramble and did a crazy thing and called to her house, (unannounced!) to see if she was up for a ramble in the forest. Coincidentally she was in the middle of trying to get her own brood to go for a stroll and was happy I’d turned up. These days you need to e-mail someone to make an appointment to phone them so I like to ‘rebel’ a bit by taking a shot and just knocking on a friends door, sometimes it pays off.

Our nearby forest park at Curragh Chase is a great place to get lost amongst its cycle trails, paths and to just wander along by the streams hearing their lovely sounds. In the gritty cycle of city life it’s easy to forget about nature and what a simple prescription it is for feeling good; the old adage of fresh air and exercise really is true. As a pair of foodies and growers, we were thrilled to see the wild garlic already sticking its little pointy heads up through the leafy forest floor. There are a number of varieties of wild garlic growing in Ireland and this can confuse people, ramsons have a pretty white spray of flowers which are great sprinkled on a soup or salad, these grow close to the forest floor. The variety we found is the broad leaf kind that is a leaf of about 4-6 inches, it makes sense to pick the larger ones to give the others a chance to mature and ideally take no more than a hat-full which is the only thing I had to gather mine in. On the Aran islands you will see a variety of garlic that’s very tall and gangly but with a huge head of gnarly little green bulbs in a cluster with tiny purple flowers and little stalks rising from it. This kind is best used by just tearing off a few flowers from the bulb to scatter on a salad, and leaving the whole thing in the ground as the plant is so strong and the root too intense to do anything with it.

Wild garlic has a relatively short season and a wonderful delicate yet pungent and peppery flavour. I like to turn it into a simple pesto of sorts and it stores in the fridge for months like this. You can use this on pasta, fish or, one of my favourite uses is in a focaccia which I have in my first book Bread on the Table. Drizzling the garlic oil over a giant pillow of puffy dough before it goes in the oven and liberally dredging it with sea salt has to be one of the finest bread toppings of all time.

Wild garlic, indeed all garlic, is a member of the allium family and therefore is great to ward off and cure colds and flus which is something we really need right now in the blustery early Spring weather.

Wild Garlic Oil

To make this simple oil just put approx 200g washed and dried (use a salad spinner for this) garlic leaves, or as much as you have, into a blender and drizzle in light olive oil until you have a thick but runny consistency. Season with a sprinkle of sea salt and black pepper. Keep this in a sealed jar in the fridge and use as a dip or salad dressing or to liven up a fish or meat dish. Or you can use it like I did in the photo above, mixed with butter and spread on some almost stale bread, wrapped in foil and baked for about 20 minutes.

Wild Garlic Pesto

The best thing about this is how much cheaper it is than basil pesto to make, brazil nuts are also a lot more economical to use than pine nuts and taste a bit better too.

Ingredients

25g Parmesan cheese, grated

350ml extra virgin olive oil

100g pine/brazil nuts

200g wild garlic leaves, washed and spun in salad spinner

Sea salt and black pepper to season

1. Whizz the nuts in the blender until they are nice and crumbly.

2.Pop the wild garlic leaves in and add the olive oil, give it a few blitzes until you have a nice consistency.

3. Stir in the cheese and season with a little sea salt and black pepper. If you’re using this pesto with pasta, a handy trick is to add a small ladle-full of the cooking water to the pesto and pasta to turn it into a lovely silky sauce that will cling lovingly to the spaghetti.